Alum gives $4.4 million for scholarships for business students from immigrant families

A $4.4 million gift to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business — the second-largest ever from an MBA alum — will fund scholarships and fellowships for high-achieving business students who come from immigrant families.

The gift comes from professor of marketing and entrepreneur Scott Galloway, who earned his MBA in 1992 and went on to found L2, Inc., to benchmark brands’ digital competence. After selling the company, he created the new the Galloway Fellows Fund at Berkeley.

Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons said Galloway’s gift will be life changing for many students. “Scott’s gift is an outstanding display of generosity that comes at a particularly difficult time for so many immigrant families,” Lyons said. “Scott understands personally what a public university education can do to change the course of students’ lives—and inspire them, in turn, to pay it forward to others.”

One such student is Josue Chavarin, who received one of the first Galloway scholarships. The son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, he grew up in Salinas along with his four siblings. As an undergraduate, he went to Berkeley, as did his younger brother; another brother went to San Jose State, and his sister is a high school senior who did a summer program at Harvard.

Growing up, he considered working in agriculture to be the norm. A combination of ability, hard work and opportunities helped him to get into college and he graduated with a degree in political science. Now, he’s working toward an MBA at Berkeley-Haas.

The Galloway scholarship, Chavarin said, made the MBA program financially possible for him.

“I never would have thought that a scholarship to empower and acknowledge children of immigrants would be available (to me)—especially in the political climate we’re in,” he said. “Mr. Galloway is a real leader in taking this stance and standing up for immigrants.”

The other students who won Galloway scholarships so far are Kira Mikityanskaya, who moved from Russia to Ohio, attended high school there and was an undergrad in Boston; Kevin Phan, the son of Vietnamese refugees who grew up in Palo Alto and graduated from UCLA; and Bolivia-born Jorge Tellez, who grew up in Fairfax,Virginia. All are MBA students, though the Galloway fund also will support undergraduates.

Galloway is currently a professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business and chairman of L2.